Wireless networks commonly employ cellular topologies to provide wireless communications capabilities across large physical areas. Through these topologies, multiple individual cells may provide various advantages. Examples of such advantages include increased communications capacity and reduced transmitter power levels.
Within each cell, a corresponding base station (BS) provides communications access to one or more mobile stations (MSs). During operation, a cell's base station may broadcast a neighbor list. The neighbor list notifies a mobile station (MS) of the neighboring base stations. Thus, through the neighbor list, mobile stations are informed of the network topology. This facilitates mobility management (e.g., handover) between cells.
WiMAX networks are wireless networks that operate in accordance with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16 standards. In WiMAX networks, base stations may broadcast neighbor lists in the forms of NBR-ADV messages.
Cellular topologies may employ various arrangements of overlapping cells. For instance, a larger cell (e.g., a macro cell) may encompass many smaller cells (e.g., micro cells pico cells, and/or femto cells). Thus, in such scenarios, a base station may have a large number of neighbors to report. Unfortunately, this causes neighbor list broadcasts to become very large. As a result, excessive communications overhead may be consumed.